


Sandcastles

by Noyuuki



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, Don’t copy to another site, First Meetings, Fluff, Gen, Minato and Kushina lived, Naruto decides to make a friend while his father is busy with work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 09:27:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16889967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Noyuuki/pseuds/Noyuuki
Summary: On just another day, Gaara's father meets with the Hokage and Gaara finds himself in a secret chance encounter with their guest's son. And in it he finds what he had long hoped for, even if he didn't know it would happen so out of the blue. And less so, so unconditionally…





	Sandcastles

**Author's Note:**

> I've been meaning to write some Naruto/Gaara fluff for a while now and this idea had been sitting in my drafts for ever so here you go!

It was a day like any other until they arrived. Gaara had heard that shinobi from another village were going to visit and he had been told to stay away while they were there.

He was outside when the commotion started. The group of shinobi was escorted through the village along a trail of onlookers. People came running, stared, and murmured among themselves, their gazes fixed on a blond man flanked by two bodyguards. Gaara wasn’t sure about his significance, but he seemed to leave everyone he passed in awe. Probably the guest his father was expecting.

Far off in the distance, sitting on a wall near the Kazekage’s office, Gaara silently watched the scene. Being among the villagers never ended well for him and by now his curiosity was subdued by his instinct of self-preservation.  
As the group came closer, Gaara noticed their attire, their headbands. Now he was sure they were the foreign guests he was supposed to stay away from. He also saw that there was a fourth person among them: a boy about his age who walked close to the blond man, held by the hand in a way that felt strangely foreign to Gaara.

Randomly, the boy looked up and noticed the lone figure on the wall. He smiled at him. And his eyes seemed to pierce Gaara with their deep blue. Unable to hold eye contact, Gaara turned away. Being found was the last thing he wanted right now. And that boy would surely turn out to be just like everyone else.

When his father stepped outside, Gaara quickly climbed down on the other side of the wall and crouched down to hide. But he was still within earshot when the group of shinobi arrived at the office.

“Lord Hokage, I am glad to see that you have arrived safely.”

His father’s voice sounded almost fake. At least to Gaara. It wasn’t the first time he had heard him talk in official settings and it always made him wonder just which version was real.

When the other man spoke, the mellow tone of his voice seemed to make the contrast even bigger.

“Thanks for accepting our proposal, Lord Kazekage. I am happy to negotiate the details of the treaty with you.”

“I see you have brought a… guest,” the Kazekage answered, audibly surprised by the deviation from his expectations.  
The blond man embarrassedly chuckled.

“I apologize. I won’t bore you with the details but I could not leave him in the village so I decided it best to take my son along. But don’t worry, my guards will take care of him, so the negotiations can proceed as planned.”

Judging from the sounds of footsteps and quieting voices, the group headed into the office and the villagers slowly dispersed. After waiting for another moment just to be safe, Gaara returned to his spot on the wall and stared into the distance.

Only the wind and the gentle sting of the morning sun kept him company. Even though the ache in his chest showed no sign of disappearing, he had stopped paying much attention to it. Maybe that was just how it was supposed to be.

Out of boredom, Gaara turned his attention to the sand on the wall. Swept it around without moving a muscle and with no clear goal in mind; just watched it swirl, sometimes seeing patterns emerge, reading images into them as if they were the clouds that were nowhere to be seen up top.

“Hey!” a voice eventually broke the silence, “Why are you up there all alone?”

The blond man’s son had returned, looking at Gaara, his eyes full of curiosity. They seemed as vast and blue as the sky above them. Gaara felt lost just meeting his gaze.

The boy moved closer, still smiling, not knowing who he was talking to.

“Don’t you have anyone to play with?”

Gaara didn’t answer. He looked at his half-incidental drawings in the sand as if that could make everyone else disappear.

“I don’t have anybody either. Dad won’t let me go with him and his guards are so boring. So I told them I had to go to the bathroom and ran off!”

Not seeing any response from Gaara, the boy tried climbing up the wall; swiftly, if clumsily—not always getting a good grip on the concrete—but still agile enough to make it over this barrier just barely taller than himself. Once on top, he sat down right in front of Gaara where he couldn’t be ignored anymore.

Gaara still tried.

The other boy’s annoyance over this seemed to mellow as he looked around, his gaze wandering across Sunagakure as if he had never seen anything like it. Maybe he hadn’t. For Gaara it was nothing special.

Not sure what else to do, Gaara resumed playing with the sand. He tried to be covert about it at first, but there’s only so much you can do to hide sand seemingly moving by itself.  
Before too long the other boy noticed. His eyes went wide and his interest in Gaara was instantly rekindled.

“Whoa, are you doing this?!”

Gaara cautiously looked up and nodded, almost too subtle for anyone to see.

For a moment, the boy simply watched the sand and the shapes it drew. Gaara was surprised he hadn’t run away yet. Not used to this kind of attention, he tried to impress the other boy. Gathered more sand, let it swirl around more. It seemed to work, but eventually the boy reached out his hand to touch the gusts of sand flying through the air.

“D-don’t!” Gaara forced out louder than he meant to. “It might hurt you…”

_At least that’s what it always does_ , he thought.

“S-sorry,” the boy said as he pulled back, surprised by Gaara’s outburst.

They remained silent for a bit, but the boy seemed to have gotten over the shock just as quickly as it had come over him when he suddenly started to draw in the sand as well. Gaara silently watched, trying to figure out what the boy was drawing, but couldn’t until the figure across from him looked up again, more than satisfied with his creation.

“Look! It’s the stone faces in my village! My dad’s in there too, ya know! Have you been to Konoha before?”

Knowing that they were supposed to be faces, Gaara could vaguely make out the shapes of the crudely drawn sculptures. He softly smiled and shook his head at the question.

Although he couldn’t quite put it into words, Gaara felt strangely happy. For being seen as just another kid, not the Kazekage’s son, not Sunagakure’s failed weapon, just… Gaara.

“You should visit. I bet you’ve never seen that many trees before!”

The boy seemed proud of his village. And of his father. Gaara tried not to think much about it, but part of him wanted to know more. He seemed so carefree. _Why_? He wondered.

But before he could give it even another thought, alarmed footsteps resounded from the office and the other boy’s smile quickly faded.

“Crap! They must have noticed I’m gone. Come here!” he half-whispered, half-shouted and grabbed Gaara’s wrist before jumping down the wall and running off, Gaara still in tow, struggling not to stumble.

Gaara felt a bit stumped. Not just by the touch, or that the boy hadn’t just left him behind in his escape. Mostly he was confused because the sand had stayed back. Did it not see the boy as an enemy? Was it because he felt at ease with him?

They kept running for a while and halfway through the boy began to laugh in excitement, with no idea where to go. Just forward, away from everyone else.  
Eventually they wound up at a fairly concealed lot between the town and the cliffs. There wasn’t much more than sand and rubble there. Maybe they’ve just recently torn down a building.

It was almost noon and the still rising sun hadn’t exactly made their escape easier on them. In what little shade there was, they sat down and caught their breath.

It didn’t seem like anyone had followed them. If the footsteps they heard had really belonged to the blond man’s guards, they were most likely highly skilled. It should have been easy for them to catch up with two kids. But maybe they had managed to leave unnoticed.  
If the guards were just searching the village now, it would probably take them a while to arrive at this lot. For some reason Gaara was glad. He still tried hard not to get his hopes up, but the boy had already stayed longer with Gaara than anyone else his age ever had.

He cautiously looked over only to realize that the boy had already been looking at him.

“So, how do you do that with the sand?” he asked once their eyes met.

Gaara silently looked at him, not sure how to even answer. _How_? He just could for all he knew. And more often than not it felt like the sand was moving on its own. It listened to him. But he didn’t control it. Not all of it.

“Are you a shinobi?” the boy continued excitedly. “I’ll be going to the academy soon to become one, too!”

Gaara turned away again.

Was this something to look forward to? He had never wanted to be a weapon. And wasn’t that just what shinobi were? Tools for the village to use and dispose of. Was it different where the boy came from?

Not wanting to think more about it, Gaara settled for the easier question.

“I don’t know, it’s always been that way,” Gaara reluctantly mumbled in no particular direction. “The sand… protects me.”

Even without looking he could tell that the boy’s gaze was still locked on him. And when he spoke up, he sounded excited.

“That’s so cool!”

It was a reaction he had never been met with. Least of all when it came to the sand that just seemed to be a part of him whether he wanted or not.

Gaara wasn’t sure how to act. He had wanted this forever, to be with other kids and just spend time with them. But it had never happened like this and he simply didn’t know what he was supposed to do.  
The boy seemed fascinated by the sand. And while he was still scared to use it around others, scared of losing control of it again, Gaara didn’t want to bore or disappoint the one person who treated him normally.

He concentrated on the pile of rubble in front of them, more specifically the sand that encompassed it all. Slowly he moved it, separated stone from sand. And as the boy watched in awe, Gaara smiled to himself.

Sand was everywhere in Sunagakure. And it was always with Gaara. Sometimes he hated what it did, what _he_ did with it. But it still felt like home. It gave him comfort. And for the first time it even helped him feel happy.

Gaara wanted to see how far he could take it. It took all the concentration he could muster, but he started to shape it, put a likeness in the pile of sand that suddenly was much more than just that.  
He knew about sandcastles, had seen others build sculptures out of sand, but Gaara had never really tried to do the same. What for?  
It felt strangely relaxing, even satisfying to just shape the sand at will. But he’d been nowhere else so no matter what castle he tried to build, it still somehow resembled his hometown.

Gaara didn’t mind. Anything was fine. As long as it prolonged the moment.

The boy crawled closer, trying to get a better look.

Gaara still felt uneasy having him so close to the sand. What if something changed? If the sand decided to strike after all. He wasn’t even supposed to be with the boy, what if he accidentally hurt him?

But nothing happened. Even when the boy dug his hands into the pile of sand and Gaara’s heart almost stopped out of fear. Nothing happened to him. And he started carving out shapes himself.

It didn’t take Gaara long to realize that the boy was once again trying to recreate those stone faces he drew earlier. But the sand was dry and the shapes quickly collapsed into nothingness again.

At first.

So absorbed in his own attempts to build a part of his village, the boy didn’t even notice that Gaara’s castle remained unchanged for several minutes. Some of it even crumbled away as its builder’s concentration moved elsewhere. And as the sand finally did what the boy wanted, he happily shouted:

“Look! I can do it too!”

Gaara smiled at him and nodded.

What he carved into the sand should never have been able to stay as it was. But it did. It was difficult to maintain and even after only a few minutes had passed, Gaara already felt exhausted. But he couldn’t stop; simply didn’t want to. With no idea what image the boy had in mind, Gaara tried to support whatever impossible overhang or crevice he tried to carve. Just to keep it all from crumbling and see how it would turn out. A few moments later, he could see a row of four heads. Not much more detailed than the drawing had been, but probably a lot more lifelike still.

Even longer after, and in front of the heads were the beginnings of a city, melting into the ruins of Gaara’s own at the edges.

It was already afternoon when a shadow suddenly appeared behind Gaara. He turned around but could barely see anything in the silhouette before him. It took him a moment to realize that it was the man from earlier.

And it took even longer for the boy to notice.

“D-dad?!” he eventually shouted in surprise.

The man quietly approached.  
Even without knowing their relationship, Gaara prepared for the worst.

But there wasn’t any anger in the man’s voice.

“Now, what did I tell you about running off?”

The boy’s shoulders still slumped, and he avoided his father’s gaze.

“I… I’m sorry,” he mumbled before suddenly looking up with little to no remorse. “But look!”

He pointed at the impossible pile of sand, full of pride at what they built—their collaboration still mostly unknown to him.

Gaara couldn’t tell if it was concern or exasperation in the man’s expression but for a moment he let it all go and crouched down to look at his son’s creation.

Still bracing for the trouble that hadn’t come, Gaara only half-listened to what the other two said to each other. The boy avidly showed his father everything he built and the latter patiently listened.

It took Gaara’s everything to keep the structure from collapsing that very moment. He knew their meeting was probably about to be ended, but even now he didn’t want to disappoint the boy.

Eventually the man stood up and tried to tell his son that it was time to go, who of course didn’t want to. And Gaara felt much the same way.

After a discussion that sounded a lot like it had happened the exact same way next to a million times before, the boy reluctantly told Gaara goodbye and smiled at him one last time before trotting off with his father’s guards, who had seemingly appeared out of nowhere when Gaara didn’t pay attention.

The blond man silently stayed behind for a moment, maybe waiting for the others to walk a little further.

“You must be Gaara, right?” he asked and looked at the perplexed boy who simply nodded.

The man turned back to the impossible miniature sand city in front of them, a knowing smile on his face, before he continued.

“Thanks for spending time with Naruto. And for helping him with… this.”

He gestured over the structure that Gaara still tried to preserve with all his might.

“Who knows what else he might have gotten himself into if you hadn’t been there.”

He let out an exhausted laugh.

Before Gaara had a chance to say how he was the thankful one, a loud “Daaaaaad!” broke the silence and signaled the man that he should probably get going.

He turned around and briefly met Gaara’s gaze.

“I’m sure we’ll meet again,” the man said with a gentle smile before walking towards his companions.

Gaara waited until they were long gone before he let go and the city in front of him collapsed into just another pile of sand again.

_Naruto_ …

He too hoped that they would meet again. And hopefully soon.

His chest ached. Just like usual. No, not quite.  
It hurt, but that wasn’t all. It wasn’t despair. It wasn’t grief. Just the feeling of something missing and an inkling of just what it was.

Out of reflex, Gaara clutched his shirt as if that could help.

For the first time in what felt like forever it didn’t seem right to ignore the feeling. Now he knew that what he longed for wasn’t out of reach.

If nothing else, the pain told him that his heart still worked. And that it was no use to crumble when he finally knew it could get better.

It was almost dusk when Gaara went back home. Strangely determined and unwilling to let anyone know about what had happened that day as if the memory could disappear if he did.

Eventually he’d visit the boy, _Naruto_. He wasn’t sure how or when, but it would happen, that much Gaara could say for certain. Eventually he’d see the village he had only been shown through a crude sandcastle today.

And suddenly, tomorrow seemed a lot brighter.

**Author's Note:**

> In which Naruto mysteriously manages to sneak onto a diplomatic mission and escapes two Jounin while abducting the Kazekage's son…
> 
> There's no romance in this (yet) but I adore Naruto/Gaara just as much as the idea of an AU where Naruto grows up as the son of the fourth Hokage, so I figured why not try both at once!  
> I'd like to make a series out of this eventually so hopefully I'll get back to this soon.  
> I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, which probably says a lot considering that I wrote it much faster than most of my other stories…
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed this fic!


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